At what age is it normal to recognise the letters of the alphabet

[makeminealargeoneplease]

Just wondering....my DS recognises them all and seems obsessed with letters, reads out loud the letters on number plates,signs or writing he sees and he's 21 months. He gets them all right apart from G and Q which he sometimes gets stuck on. I'm told this is quite advanced but I'm not sure, anyone know much about child development and this kind of thing?

So is that quite unusual then Zoopas? My ds can do that and his nursery teacher knows he can but all she said, with understatement was 'oh he's fine with letters and numbers'...! I wasn't expecting her to declare him a genius or anything but he's only 3.5.

i have no idea. I do not do letters with my dd - she is just under 3, and i think too little.
We do do numbers and counting things - but as part of play and we have recently starting playing a simple board game with a dice. We do lots of colouring and drawing, and she loves to do reading, both family reading to her, and when she reads to herself ( she makes a story up from the pictures). Ill start to do letter sounds with her when she shows signs of being ready.

most people seem to have it down by about 20 or so, I find.

Have never done much of this letter recognition business with my kids. Why do they need to know that "h" is an "aitch"? Its letter sounds that is important. They have both picked up both the letter sounds and the letter names very very quickly as part of learning to read.

Sorry but I don't think letter-spotting is a sign of early ability. Remember that a lot of these kids who have NO idea what to call a "c" know the name of EVERY character from Thomas the Tank Engline, including the diesels.

Shop - totally the right approach from the sounds of it - you can't push them into learning this stuff as it's counterproductive. My ds isn't very interested in drawing or 'writing' and is definitely behind others at nursery on this from what I can tell but I am taking a gentle approach to encouraging led by him. He just happened to be interested in letters.

Message withdrawn

While this thread has mostly been positive there have been a few negative comments.

Are people really not allowed to be proud of their children if they thing they are 'advanced', are we really supposed to go around boasting about how stupid our children are? I don't think anyone here is saying 'well my child knows letters therefore must be a genius' but you know what we put so much time and energy into our children for little reward, there is no harm in being proud that our child can do something impressive (and assuming it is down to our parenting skills!). I'm constantly boring people at work with things like "DD climbed up a slide the wrong way at the weekend" "but six months ago she could even walk! How impressive is that?"

No one on here is being judgy about children who can't read their letters, no one is saying they are hot housing, and no one has booked their place at Oxford yet. Also, it's not unreasonable to ask what other children are doing when you have nothing to compare to.

Be proud of your children!

They all do things at their own pace, it is like learning to sit up or walk-it really isn't important!
If they are interested it is sensible to encourage them, if they aren't there is no need to push it.
Slow but sure often wins the race (for those who think it is a race!)I would say it was normal anytime between 18months and 5yrs.